O-blog-dee-o-blog-da

By Melanie Nathan, Nov 27, 2025.

Why Trump’s Retreat From Africa Endangers Israel’s Future: “Power vacuums in Africa become power blocs at the U.N.- rarely in Israel’s favor.”

During the last presidential election I warned fellow Jews, often to uncomfortable silence, unfriending, or cancellation, that Donald Trump’s approach to foreign policy, democratic norms, and global alliances would ultimately harm Israel rather than protect it. I tried to understand why some fellow Jews and Israelis saw him as a friend: Strong rhetoric, symbolic gestures, and the ability to project unwavering support in moments of crisis. But beneath the theater, his stated worldview, disengagement from global institutions, the erosion of democratic guardrails in the U.S., and the abandonment of long-standing alliances, was always going to weaken the very international order that has contributed to protect Israel for seven decades.

Many argued that a MAGA-led Trump future would be “better for Israel” than any Democratic administration. But this was a narrow, short-term calculation. Both the Biden administration and the previous Trump administration recognized Hamas as terrorists, prioritized hostage recovery, and offered military and diplomatic support to Israel. Biden helped secure the release of over 140 hostages; Trump oversaw the final 50 hostages including deceased. Biden reinforced Israel’s missile defense, transferred critical arms, and defended Israel in its hour of greatest vulnerability, even while urging restraint. Up to this moment in time, one could argue the margins. But the argument stops there.

Because this is no longer about “who did what for Israel last year or before….” This is about whether Israel survives in a world that is changing faster than many American Jews or Israeli policymakers are prepared to acknowledge, as directly impacted by the Trump administration:

And this is where Trump’s policies become deeply dangerous. Trump’s geopolitical retreat has handed Africa to China and Russia. I warned of precisely this:

One of the least discussed, but most consequential realignments of this Trump era is the near-total American retreat from Africa. Trump cut USAID programs, hollowed out embassies, disengaged from emerging African markets, ignored security partnerships, undermined AGOA momentum, and pulled the U.S. out of the G20 Compact with Africa.

Africa is not a peripheral afterthought. It is the future epicenter of global population, markets, rare minerals, manufacturing, shipping lanes, and diplomatic power. China understood this. Russia understood this. Trump did not.

As the U.S. steps back, China fills the vacuum. We have seen it – with massive infrastructure, credit diplomacy, and political partnerships. Russia has continued to expand its reach through security engagements, arms supplies, and political influence networks across the Sahel, the Horn of Africa, and Central Africa. An entire continent, critical to the global balance of power, is increasingly influenced by countries whose strategic objectives are often antagonistic to both the United States and Israel.

This directly threatens Israel: Firstly, Africa is the future diplomatic battlefield—and the U.S. just walked off it. At the United Nations, where Israel already faces a hostile landscape and disproportionate scrutiny, African voting blocs are decisive. As China and Russia become Africa’s primary political patrons, they gain greater leverage to shape voting behavior and narratives. Beijing and Moscow promote interpretations of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict grounded in “colonialism,” “apartheid,” and “decolonization”, frames that resonate strongly across the Global South.

When the U.S. retreats, those narratives solidify. So secondly, anti-Israel narratives gain institutional power.

South Africa’s aggressive posture, leading the “genocide” case against Israel at the International Court of Justice, might have been tempered by American influence during the G20 Summit hosted in Johannesburg. Instead, the U.S. chose not to attend, ceding the stage to the very nation championing the most damaging legal narrative against Israel on the world stage.

Washington’s absence allowed South Africa to position itself as a moral leader of the Global South and the chief architect of the “Israel genocide” myth. With no counterweight present, its messaging took root across Africa, Latin America, and parts of Asia.

This wasn’t just a missed opportunity. It was strategic malpractice. So, thirdly,  Israel loses its strongest diplomatic anchor.

Israel has spent decades building bilateral relationships across Africa, agreements in agriculture, water technology, intelligence cooperation, and public health. Many African nations respect Israel for its innovation, resilience, and partnership model. But in a geopolitical environment where the U.S. withdraws, and China and Russia preside, Israel’s standing becomes more fragile. Israel can and should continue expanding its African partnerships, but without robust U.S. presence, the receptivity of African nations will hinge on the preferences of Beijing and Moscow, not Jerusalem or Washington.

This brings me to the fourth critical point- that security risks intensify around Israel’s periphery. Russian strategic entrenchment in the Sahel, the Red Sea littoral, and parts of the Horn of Africa, combined with Chinese control over key maritime infrastructure, narrows Israel’s operational space, weakens intelligence-sharing environments, and offers Israel’s adversaries new logistical depth. The United States historically counterbalanced these forces. Under Trump’s retreat, that balance collapsed.

Here is the lesson for Jewish America, and for Israel’s Leaders: Many American Jews who embraced Trump believed strength equals friends, and rhetoric equals policy. But geopolitics does not work like that. Israel’s security has always depended on something larger than personalities: a strong, stable United States with deep alliances, a functioning diplomatic corps, respected democratic institutions, and global credibility.

When the U.S. weakens itself as Trump’s policies are doing, Israel becomes more isolated. When the U.S. abandons regions to authoritarian rivals, those rivals rewrite the narrative about Israel.
When the U.S. retreats from multilateral arenas, Israel loses its most powerful advocate.

Trump’s disengagement from Africa is not a side story. It is a central warning: the world order that has protected Israel since 1948 is not guaranteed. It requires American participation, leadership, and moral clarity. And that is precisely what Trump eroded.

A further, and deeply misunderstood, consequence of American retreat is the surge of Islamist extremism across Africa, notably in Nigeria, where Boko Haram, ISIS-West Africa, and a constellation of jihadist factions are expanding territorial reach and operational sophistication. Instead of strengthening cooperation with Nigeria, Africa’s largest democracy and a critical regional counterterrorism partner, Trump publicly threatened the country and floated punitive measures that alienated Abuja at precisely the moment coordination was most needed. This vacuum has allowed jihadist movements to entrench themselves not only in Nigeria, but across the Sahel, from Mali to Burkina Faso to Niger.

When the United States walks away from African security partnerships, it doesn’t make America safer; it removes the very intelligence, early-warning systems, and joint operations that prevent attacks before they reach our shores. Without alliance, without embedded diplomatic presence, and without trust, Africa becomes a platform that extremist networks can exploit, leaving both the United States, Israel, Jews and Christians, around the world, more vulnerable at the exact moment vigilance is most essential.

In looking ahead Israel must understand and maybe it does, that it should continue deepening its bilateral relationships with African states. There is genuine interest in Israeli innovation and security cooperation, and African leaders appreciate Israel’s role as a pragmatic partner. But I caution, these relationships do not compensate for the loss of American influence.

The question now is not whether Israel had strong ties with Africa in the past. The question is whether those ties can withstand a future in which China and Russia are the gatekeepers.

Without a strong U.S. Africa presence, Israel’s voice in the Global South will become increasingly marginalized, no matter how many embassies it opens, or how effectively it engages. The belief that Trump was “good for Israel” rested on symbolic gestures and short-term calculations. But the long-term consequences of his policies are now unfolding: a weaker U.S., a more emboldened China and Russia, a Global South increasingly shaped by anti-Israel narratives, and a diplomatic landscape in which Israel stands more alone. For American Jews and Israeli leaders alike, the lesson is irrefutable.  Israel’s future depends on a strong, globally engaged United States, not on isolationist theatrics or authoritarian flirtations. Abandoning continents, alliances, and institutions does not protect Israel. It abandons Israel.

Israel, once anchored by an unshakeable American presence, now drifts closer to an ocean of voices ready to deny its story, its suffering, its very existence. We are a people who have survived because others stood with us when it mattered most, including Africa. When America retreats from Africa, it abandons not only an entire continent, it abandons Israel and by extension jews, at the moment it most needs a powerful friend. To pretend otherwise is to close our eyes while a tidal wave swells and heads to land. If we care about Israel’s future, its security, its dignity, its right to exist, our people, we must care about America’s engagement with the world that will soon define global power. We must care about who we vote for in high powered positions.  The stakes are not abstract. They are our lifeline. And we will feel the cost of this retreat long after the speeches fade.

Melanie Nathan is the Executive Director of the African Human Rights Coalition and an internationally recognized expert on African political conditions, displacement, and human-rights crises. A granddaughter of Jewish orphan refugees who survived the Eastern European Pogroms, she owes her very existence to Africa—specifically South Africa, the one nation that opened its doors when others turned her family away. Her great-grandmother, Feiga Shamis, separated from her daughter, Rose Shamis Miller,  during the Pogroms. Rose was 10. Feiga  arrived in Israel in 1948 after surviving both Pogroms and the Holocaust. Her grandmother was raised in a Johannesburg Jewish orphanage and never saw her mother again. Africa has been a home, a refuge, and at times a lifeline for Jews, and South Africa still holds one of the continent’s largest Jewish communities. Nathan’s work across multiple African countries, combined with her deep Jewish roots and family ties to Israel, uniquely positions her to analyze the geopolitical shifts now reshaping Africa, the United States, and Israel’s global standing.